The union of our nation that was built on reason, is being shredded! Our liberty is being destroyed and our growing dependency on authority over us is frightening. — Athena
I am not sure how I feel on this. Some days I see the religious "nones" increasing and people generally being more open to (and demanding of) peace. But then the next day, I see the push toward the idea that "all opinions are equal" and wonder if that idea is the death of democracy.
Well, I was expecting to argue a bit more...but I think I agreed with almost everything :up: — ZhouBoTong
If by law you mean a legal framework codified and enforced then it's just the tip of the iceberg. There are other moral laws people follow and it's my suspicion that these are invariably religious morals.
Given that the above is true, people can be divided into two categories: Category 1, the religious-good, are those people who use religion as a guide for their behavior and category 2, the legal-good who either have no idea or simply don't care about religion and the only thing that keeps them from transforming into thieves, murderers, etc is the legal system.
If the law broke down or didn't exist then the legal-good would immediately complete their metamorphosis into criminals and chaos would ensue but the religious-good who are guided by religious morals would continue to be good as they were never actually dependent on the legal system.
If this tells us anything, it is that there must exist at least one set of laws to prevent immoral behavior. The legal system just happens to be the first line of defense. — TheMadFool
I’m optimistic and think most of us would act morally save for a few opportunists. But then again it would be interesting to see some statistics on whether people abide by laws out of principle or because they fear being punished. — NOS4A2
Christianity without education for higher order thinking skills is not a good thing. Christianity sustained ignorance and mistreatment of human beings for hundreds of years. I would not expect humans to do better without better education. — Athena
Most "anarchist" ideals are utopian, and would only "work" in small, voluntary groups of people with some measure of morality and respect for one another, — IvoryBlackBishop
It's a bit like how people who really judge anger can sometimes explode. And their explosion seems to confirm their judgments of anger. But the truth is they have very little experience with things like self-assertion and other balanced expressions of anger. — Coben
Looks to me like you want to return to the good old days when Martin Luther thought witch hunters were necessary, and God chose who would rule and who would serve?
Man's understanding of the gods and law is older than Christianity and really the Christian God is not that good. He is jealous, revengeful, fearsome and punishing, the role model of an abusive husband. He is the same God worshiped by Muslims and Christians and Muslims share more in common than say Mormons and Catholics and Evangelical Christians. All these people worship a god of war except the Quakers who do not refer to the old testament and follow Jesus. While Buddhism and Hinduism provide excellent teachings on morality.
The God of Abraham religions did not give us the highest morals and peace. Democracy and science, with science being understood as knowledge of the universal laws (God), lifting humanity higher than what Christian Europe could accomplish before the age of reason. It is about how to come to know the laws, through the authority of the bible or through science and reason? — Athena
Isn't the idea of new baboons coming into the tribe and trying to assert dominance then being shunned and shown by the rest "this is not how we do things around here"...a type of pedagogy — ZhouBoTong
The lack of contingency in thet reatment of transfer males by residents argues against instruction; commensurate with this, there is relatively little evidence for‘‘instruction’’in nonhuman primate cultural transmission — Sapolsky RM, Share LJ (2004) A pacific culture among wild baboons: Its emergence and transmission
Are you a professor? Or some sort of sociology professional? I just mean...why do you know all this? — ZhouBoTong
should I dismiss Piaget's stages of cognitive development or Erikson's stages of (I don't even remember, maybe social development?)? — ZhouBoTong
Thank you for the links. I actually had the good fortune to work with one of Kahneman's doctoral students for a short while so I'm fairly familiar with his work, but I will take another look. What I was looking for was some support for your assertions about the possible effects of education, specifically that it "is possible to use education to manifest a culture that promotes morality and decreases social problems." I don't recall anything in Kahneman which demonstrated anything of this nature - could you point me to the particular experiment or implication you're referencing here. — Isaac
It is very hard to test, because the fact that we are brought up under threats, both social and legal, means that if we are suddenly without these outside forces and potential punishments it is a very specific situation. We are, then, precisely, people who have been under threat, released from threat. A real test would have to be, what happens if people are raised not under threat and have freedom from potential incarceration? Adn the only way to test that would be to take over an island. — Coben
Trump wants to dismantle the social safety net, and he might actually get his way sooner or later. He won’t go unless kicking and screaming. — Noah Te Stroete
Isn't the idea of new baboons coming into the tribe and trying to assert dominance then being shunned and shown by the rest "this is not how we do things around here"...a type of pedagogy — ZhouBoTong
"Fuck you. You are just a fucking baboon, kid, don't you forget that. Now repeat after me, and write a hundred times on the blackboard: "I solemnly swear to stop trying to be a goofy alpha-male wannabe, I shall remain docile, peace-loving and listen to John Lennon records for the rest of my days"." — god must be atheist
Nothing makes people more willing to fight for what they believe than the notion that they know the will of God and are fighting for God. — Athena
Isn't it awful when there is nothing to argue. — Athena
we lost the memory of what science (reason) has to do with over coming evil and what morals have to do with liberty and democracy. — Athena
This is why when the Roman and Greek documents were rediscovered and literate people knew Greek and Latin we had the renaissance bringing a love of reason back, — Athena
No. I'm using pedagogy in it's strict sense here, in that no actual direct teaching took place. Sapolsky even tested directly for this with the tribe when the alpha males first came into it from the nearby Forest Troop. He says
The lack of contingency in thet reatment of transfer males by residents argues against instruction; commensurate with this, there is relatively little evidence for‘‘instruction’’in nonhuman primate cultural transmission
— Sapolsky RM, Share LJ (2004) A pacific culture among wild baboons: Its emergence and transmission — Isaac
Yes. I'm sort of retired now, but my academic career has been in social psychology. My wife's a child psychologist though, with a special interest in education, so it's more dinner-table conversation stuff that I've picked this up from, rather than my own work. — Isaac
Margret Donaldson is good on undermining a lot of the Piaget stuff. She doesn't throw it out or anything, but it's remarkable what she gets the children to do (which Piaget said they couldn't) when they're in a less stressful environment. Stephen Shanker is doing some work on the link between stress and educational ability at the moment which might also be of interest, but again, I don't want to derail the thread. — Isaac
Interesting point but stating religious morality as the only alternative is a little reductive dont you think. Morality is much more complex than a two path ideological frame work. There are other debates intrinsically woven into this discussion that arent present in a religion only base of morality. — LuckilyDefinitive
History shows this is certainly true. However, I sometimes think it is the "knowing" part that is more dangerous than the "will of God" aspect. Don't get me wrong, the "will of God" has a long history of convincing people they "know" what is best. But I worry that any moral system that people consider to be "objectively correct" would lead to strong feelings, which have the potential to be acted upon (but I can agree that religion has been the biggest cause of this up until now). — ZhouBoTong
↪Athena
Interesting point but stating religious morality as the only alternative is a little reductive dont you think. Morality is much more complex than a two path ideological frame work. There are other debates intrinsically woven into this discussion that arent present in a religion only base of morality. — LuckilyDefinitive
Interesting topic. After thinking about it for a bit I have a question...do you think our belief in a more inclusive and egalitarian society has anything to do with this loss? Perhaps an equal percent of the population (or even a little higher than in the past) agree with the importance of science and reasoning, but now the masses have more power in society? I certainly believe that more power for the masses has many benefits, but it seems there will have to be downsides as well (at least in the short term anyway). — ZhouBoTong
So, when I said there's a kind of morality that's religious I was referring to those moral principles that were plucked from religion, assessed to be worthy, and then adopted by people. The connection between god/the divine with this kind moral code is perhaps best described as filial - they are offsprings of divine morality and the link terminates there for some and maybe most. — TheMadFool
It is the Christian Right that supports the conservative presidents and the skyrocketing growth of our military budget and wars fought without being budgeted, such as Bush's invasion of Iraq. The mentality is also what gave the world Hitler. These folks know the will of God is what they want. They know this by faith not reason. — Athena
The masses are too ignorant to have power. — Athena
far too many are thrilled by the idea of robots running everything. — Athena
Whose story of God are you using? Do you prefer one holy book over another? Why?
How divine is it to destroy the planet we live on? Whose morals are effectively opposing this? Or do you accept global warming as a wonderful sign we are in the last days and feel happy about this? — Athena
Do we expect this to change? Or should we just start coming up with a better option than democracy? I actually largely agree with this idea, but I get the sense from you that you are very much in favor of increasing democracy and personal liberty. How will democracy ever work if the masses are too ignorant to realize their power?
Also, if we wanted MAXIMUM personal liberty we could NOT have democracy, right? It would only be a matter of time before someone voted in a way that would limit personal liberty. — ZhouBoTong
Do we expect this to change? Or should we just start coming up with a better option than democracy? — ZhouBoTong
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